It is turning into a heady time. Nearly 800 people showed up at the Westin early Thursday for the annual "Wake Up for the Environment" breakfast staged by Washington Conservation Voters. The event strives to be bipartisan, but the governing party in the "other" Washington was criticized early and often.

Nevermind that Reichert has helped defend against bad stuff. He told GOP leaders last year that he would fight them on the House floor if they went ahead with plans to gut laws that keep supertankers out of Puget Sound.

With a political thaw in the air, the state's greens are set to take the offensive. The agenda is pretty ambitious.

A top priority is pushing cleanup of Puget Sound to the front of the nation's environmental to-do list. The feds have put vast resources into the Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay.

Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., would become a key overseer of the Environmental Protection Agency's budget if Democrats take control of the House.

"We have galvanized our nation to action when our (federal) government would take none," Michael McGinn of the Sierra Club said, introducing Nickels.

An effort started by Nickels has signed up 319 mayors of American cities, with 51 million people living in them, in a commitment to meet emission goals of the 1997 Kyoto Protocols. President Bush has ridiculed and repudiated the 1997 global environmental accord.

The "Left Coast" has taken a lead on greenhouse gas emissions. In California, GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently signed into law a sweeping set of new standards.

Washington and eight other states have followed, or soon will, California's lead in creating new vehicle emission standards designed to reduce greenhouse gases 22 percent by the 2012 model year.

Our state's political picture has changed since the 1960s, when Washington saw its first major conservation brawls over a national park in the North Cascades and plans to put an open-pit mine on a high ridge in the Glacier Peak Wilderness.

"Welcome Kennicott Copper!" said a sign erected over the Suiattle River road near Darrington, as U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas arrived to lead an anti-open-pit hike.

At the time, politicians ran from, not with, conservationists' support.

But that was then!

Cantwell is running for re-election this year as a champion of new energy technologies and fuel-efficiency standards. She wears, as a badge of honor, denunciations by Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, for blocking efforts to drill in the Arctic refuge.

And the greens are responding with greenbacks. Last week's Campion-hosted reception put $20,000 into Cantwell's coffers. The national League of Conservation Voters made her its first endorsed candidate of the 2006 election cycle.

Washington Conservation Voters has racked up an 80 percent "win" rate with its endorsed candidates, ranging from unopposed Seattle legislators to tough county and commissioner races in Clark, Snohomish and Whatcom counties.

The 6,000-member association forged a coalition with sports groups and rural residents that forced the administration to halt plans for natural gas wells in the Rocky Mountain front country near Glacier National Park.